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Jonathan Bensen

Jonathan is a Director of Product Management, and is responsible for building and driving Centrify’s mobile client and strategy, as well as multi-factor authentication solutions. He has designed and developed enterprise web security solutions, multi-factor authentication for government and private sector, and cloud-based mobile security solutions. Twitter: @Cybertronic0

I’m here at Mobile World Congress 2017, and of course all the big names have new phones, but we expect that now. This year the theme is decidedly more about the future. Every year MWC has a theme, which is usually some sort of catchy marketing phrase. However, this year the theme is “The Next Element,” and I think it fits. Things like 5G connected cars, drones, VR and IoT are the showcase of many of the companies here. This is all great, and I like the progress the industry has made in just the last year. However, for me being…

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You’ve seen the news headlines, “900 Million Android Devices Vulnerable!” Which, at first glance seems pretty shocking — after all, that’s roughly half of all active Android devices. If you are like me though, this kind of news is becoming all too normal. It seems there is always some new hack, exploit or vulnerability. Before this, it was Stagefright – the vulnerability where an attacker could gain control of your device with just an MMS message. When it comes to mobile devices, there is a certain sensitivity. For most of us, if someone is able to gain control of our device,…

MoreComments Off on How to Secure Your Mobile Device, In an Unsafe World

As you’ve probably seen around here, Centrify is excited about our features which enable enterprises to deploy MFA across their enterprise, so that you are fully protected. We’ve been calling this initiative “MFA Everywhere.” But, what does “everywhere” mean? To me it means protect your data/apps/network with a modern identity perimeter wherever you expose access. Imagine if all the doors to enter your house required keys, except one. That wouldn’t be a very good solution to protecting your home, so make sure you aren’t doing something similar to your network. Remember, half protected, is half not. VPN’s are often overlooked…

What is a derived credential anyway? You may have heard that Centrify announced support for “derived credentials,” in conjunction with its smart card offering. If you aren’t in the federal or ultra-secure enterprise space, you’ve probably never heard of derived credentials. So what’s so special about it? Users that are issued smart cards as their primary means of authentication have to physically insert a card into a reader on their desktop/laptop and then enter a PIN. This form of authentication replaces the username and password, and also covers the 2-factor requirement as well. (The card is something you have, and…

I’ve worked in security companies nearly my whole career, so I understand why building security into our solutions is important. However, for some it can be a challenge, because the details of security can sometimes be complicated and difficult to understand. It’s our job as a security company to make these things easier to understand, but also to make sure security is something that “just works,” and isn’t a reactive function. Let’s talk about an example that should make this more clear. Recently, the team here at Centrify alerted me to a news report that a security researcher, Lookout, had…

MoreComments Off on Wouldn’t You Expect Security Features to Just Be in a Security App?

It’s Halloween time, which means new candy from Google in the form of Android 6, and a few new Nexus devices (this time with fingerprint readers). The mobile team at Centrify has also been hard at work on some really great features — some of which work to manage and secure some of the fancy new capabilities of the new Android devices. It’s all in the hands In the November release, we will have full support for the new native fingerprint readers that should become ubiquitous on Android devices over the coming year. Google is banking on this fingerprint technology being…

MoreComments Off on Android for Work and TrueSSO: We’ve Got ‘Em, Others Don’t!

In my last blog I talked about some of the new features that were part of our latest mobile release, including support for the Apple Watch wearable device, app-lock using fingerprint and NFC, and our overall strategy when it comes to wearables and innovative security features with regards to mobile. This is all great news for our customers, and continues our commitment to integrated app and mobile management, but let’s go back a bit to when it all started. Centrify was the first (and remains the only) vendor to truly integrate identity and mobility management delivered from the cloud. At…

I’m happy to announce that our new 15.5 mobile client supports the exciting Apple Watch wearable device. While not new to the wearable scene, Centrify is excited about extending our support for wearables to the Apple Watch to enable quick, easy, and secure MFA for Centrify application access. Many other companies are using the launch of the Apple Watch to officially declare their support and strategy for wearable devices. Centrify announced our first support for wearables at the beginning of 2015, with our support of Android Wear. With the advent of wearables becoming more mainstream, Centrify is committed to looking into ways…

MoreComments Off on Apple Watch, Wearable Strategy, and Other 15.5 Mobile Features

If you’ve read my last blog, you know that the Centrify mobile team is in full force at this year’s Mobile World Congress, and demoing some of the latest mobile features of Centrify Identify Service. Together with our partner Samsung, we are excited to announce and demo some of the new features in the KNOX 2.4 platform released this week. One key new feature is Bulk enrollment for Android on Samsung devices. This gives IT administrators the ability to enroll devices into Centrify Identity Service, or Knox EMM, without having physical access to the device. This was a feature in…

MoreComments Off on Centrify Demoing the Latest KNOX 2.4 features at MWC 2015

I’m here with the Centrify team at this year’s Mobile World Congress. We are proud to be demoing some very exciting new mobile features that help boost security in the workplace. We’re all aware of the regular cadence of news regarding hacked companies. Huge names we all know, down to some smaller players. You name it, nobody is safe. All of these hacks are being traced back to the fact that companies have holes in their security practices, which usually include some form of weak password and authentication controls. Re-used, shared, or poorly secured passwords are compromised by the attackers,…

Centrify CEO Tom Kemp, an industry expert in security and infrastructure software, discusses market and technology issues around the disruption occurring in the Identity and Access Management market due to the cloud, mobile and consumerization of IT trends occurring in today's IT environment.